Young Justices Many Failings: Packaging Issues And Brand Confusion

[CLIMAXone]

We've been discussing in one form or another the failings of Mattel which have lead to the upcoming cancelling of the Young Justice action figure line. Character selection, distribution and all the other issues, but one thing we've not discussed (and it was something I hinted at a long time ago and never got around to talking about) is brand confusion and poor packaging design.

*Disclaimer: These are just some observations from my point of view as a designer and from my own experience with such things.

Young Justices Many Failings: Packaging Issues And Brand Confusion

When you design a package you want to do two things
- Highlight the brand
- Highlight the item

You want your brand to be strong, front and center and you want people to recognize either your font or logo immediately so that it stands out from everything else on the shelf.

Coke. Pepsi. STAR WARS. Apple. All these brands are instantly recognizable among the shelves of ubiquitous electronics and food items and you instantly gravitate toward them because you see value in that brand. You see that red, you see that blue, you see that font and instantly you are drawn to them and cancel out all the other visual noise taking place in the isle trying to get your attention.

This is the first place Mattel failed.

The first thing you notice on the packaging is the "DC UNIVERSE" front and center on the packaging in bold dark letters. Sure this is a great call out, but that isn't what you are trying to sell. You're not selling DC UNIVERSE, you're selling Young Justice.

When a parent goes into a toy isle they are going to see DC UNIVERSE first. This is a problem because if they are told to get Young Justice toys by their children, a lot of times they will glance past the not as bold, not as dark and not as strong font treatment for Young Justice and just think "Well I guess they don't have it". Even though if it were a snake it would have bitten them, they might not even notice.

The Young Justice font is small, thin and pale in comparison to the rest of the package and just doesn't stand out for a lot of reasons. Its in the wrong place, its not dark enough and you can very easily miss it if you're not savy and not looking for it.

Issue two, you want to highlight the item in the package.

While they didn't do a bad job of this per say, the fact that there are figure bases front and center is absurd and really doesn't add any value. You see these tiny figures in this giant package with these figure stands taking up most of the space, then you look at the price and you certainly don't feel like your getting a good value.

When the figures looks so tiny inside these giant boxes, there is in at least the subconscious mind, the thought that there isn't much value in this item. The box is largely empty and something that is almost inconsequential is being shown off as if it were a great feature! Figure stands aren't a feature, weapons, accessories and other dodads are. A parent wants to feel like they are getting a good value and when they see these boxes I know they must be thinking they aren't.

There has to be clear value in an item that makes us want to buy it, within the Young Justice line there is everything but. All these missteps lead up to the brand not being strong and leads up to people passing it by for other items that seem to give them more bang for the buck and are more clearly defined.

This is a good example of packaging that is clear and doesn't confuse the buyer.

Young Justices Many Failings: Packaging Issues And Brand Confusion

Transformers is at the top and shown clearly, all the other information taking secondary roles on the package facing. Now imagine "ALLSPARK POWER" and "TRANSFORMERS" were swapped out for one another, that's exactly what Mattel did with the DC UNIVERSE logo and the Young Justice logo.

DC UNIVERSE should have been a corner tag call out or on the bottom somewhere or a starburst on the package, it should never be the most prominent item on the package.

I think this is one of the reasons that Mattel products haven't done well (among others) is simple brand confusion. They can be part of the DC UNIVERSE line but you have to showcase the line itself above all else to give it a strong presence in the isle. Young Justice should be huge on that package and brighter or darker than everything else to make it stand out and honestly they failed miserably at that. As it stands the Young Justice font treatment is the same tone as everything else and blends into this super hectic and busy packaging that cant decide if its an ensemble movie poster or a kids toys. While its extremely busy, nothing stands out aside from the DC Universe logo.

These are just some thoughts I wanted to share. Sorry if I got rambly haha. 

[CLIMAXone]

Here are a few more examples of good, clean package design that doesn't cause any brand confusion or mislead to what it is.

[raven1821]

So true. You should post rbis over at Matty Collector. Maybe they will rethink there decision about canceling Young Justice or another DC line. Or maybe they will give you a job fixing their mistakes.

[j1h15233]

Very well written. The biggest problem for that packaging though was the price that rang up when you scanned the bar code.

[CLIMAXone]

Raven, for a time I would have loved to do that, and where I lived in California was about 15 minutes away from their headquarters, but with the way they obviously do things there I doubt I would last long cause I have trouble keeping my mouth shut when I see things aren't done correctly

j1 - AMEN BROTHER!

[DocSeth81]

i honestly dont think the packaging is the reason YJ figures are leaving us.  I think it is mainly price, but also distrubation.  Wave 1 was easy to find, Wave 2 easy to find, now wave 3, hard to find.  The Toys R Us near me STILL has the wave 1 double packs, I've never seen the wave 2 ones. 

but i still say the main thing is price.

[j1h15233]

i honestly dont think the packaging is the reason YJ figures are leaving us.  I think it is mainly price, but also distrubation.  Wave 1 was easy to find, Wave 2 easy to find, now wave 3, hard to find.  The Toys R Us near me STILL has the wave 1 double packs, I've never seen the wave 2 ones. 

but i still say the main thing is price.

It's not so much that they were easy to find, it's that there were too many of them. Let's assume that they were in cases of 12. With only 4 figures in a wave, you have three of each figure sitting on the pegs. If you order three cases of wave 1 for your store, then you're required to sell 9 of each figure to sell through what you ordered. Who is buying 9 Icicle Jr. figures? How many people will buy Speedy when he had almost no role on the show as Speedy? Yea, it made wave 1, and in some places wave 2, really easy to find but not AT ALL easy to get rid of.

[DocSeth81]

i honestly dont think the packaging is the reason YJ figures are leaving us.  I think it is mainly price, but also distrubation.  Wave 1 was easy to find, Wave 2 easy to find, now wave 3, hard to find.  The Toys R Us near me STILL has the wave 1 double packs, I've never seen the wave 2 ones. 

but i still say the main thing is price.

It's not so much that they were easy to find, it's that there were too many of them. Let's assume that they were in cases of 12. With only 4 figures in a wave, you have three of each figure sitting on the pegs. If you order three cases of wave 1 for your store, then you're required to sell 9 of each figure to sell through what you ordered. Who is buying 9 Icicle Jr. figures? How many people will buy Speedy when he had almost no role on the show as Speedy? Yea, it made wave 1, and in some places wave 2, really easy to find but not AT ALL easy to get rid of.

its weird, the stores near me are almost always sold out of YJ figures.  Luckily I got the HoJ, but I am still going around looking for wave 3 for a few people here. 

Does anyone know if the wave with Artemis and the wave with Red Arrow are going to come out?

[j1h15233]

The Artemis wave will but Red Arrow and Marvel will never see retail.

[CLIMAXone]

i honestly dont think the packaging is the reason YJ figures are leaving us.  I think it is mainly price, but also distrubation.  Wave 1 was easy to find, Wave 2 easy to find, now wave 3, hard to find.  The Toys R Us near me STILL has the wave 1 double packs, I've never seen the wave 2 ones. 

but i still say the main thing is price.

I'm not saying its the only reason, I'm saying from a design aspect, they failed pretty badly. I think Mattel did a lot of things wrong and have done lots of things wrong for years, but this is not the disease per say, but a symptom.

The poor package design is just one of the symptoms of the overall failure along the line with Mattel. For me (a designer) this is a pretty big deal when you look at how important packaging is in todays retail market. It shows a total lack of either knowledge or leadership within their ecosystem and would lead me to believe there aren't any or enough strong voices and the whole process is a committee process which is weak. This again is just me extrapolating from the available information and my own knowledge of how things work and what I've seen in such situations.

[DocSeth81]

The Artemis wave will but Red Arrow and Marvel will never see retail.

fudge

[CLIMAXone]

Thought I would put my money where my mouth is and throw together a comp showing what I think an effective package would look like.

This is just me hoping on Photoshop for about 25 minutes with images I pulled off google. Nothing terribly fancy and just a quick throw together, but you get the idea.

Young Justices Many Failings: Packaging Issues And Brand Confusion

ADDENDUM: Looking at this again I need to make the young justice more bold and add some effects to highlight it but like I said this is just a quick throw together.

[graphix1971]

I think it's drastically better ... the logo is probably what was provided and approved by DC ... but there are many ways they could have made it stand out better.